Recruitment in Zimbabwe Overson Musopero

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Recruitment in Zimbabwe Overson Musopero

International Journal of Public Administration and Management Research (IJPAMR), Vol. 6, No. 2, March,
2021. Available online at http://journals.rcmss.com/index.php/ijpamr; www.academix.ng
ISSN: 2350-2231(E) ISSN: 2346-7215 (P)
                                                    Overson, Musopero & Geon Lee , 2021, 6(2):84-99

                                         DOI:10.36758/ijpamr/v6n2.2021/07
                                         DOI: URL:https://doi.org/10.36758/ijpamr/v6n2.2021/07
       Examining the Challenges of Implementing Merit-based Civil Servant
                           Recruitment in Zimbabwe

                                    Overson Musopero
                              Doctoral student, Korea University
                               Email: oversonmusopero@gmail.com

                                        Geon Lee
                       Associate Professor, School of Policy Science,
                            222 Wangsimni-ro Seongdong-gu
                      Hanyang University, Multidisciplinary Hall #403
                                    Seoul 04763, Korea
                                     82-02-2220-0826
                               Email: leegn@hanyang.ac.kr

Abstract
A civil service system is an integral part of all government systems to allow critical interface
between the government and its citizens. Many studies on civil service systems have produced
findings in the context of Western countries. In this study, we focus on Zimbabwe, a developing
country in southern Africa, to examine the reasons why merit-based civil service recruitment is
not properly implemented in Zimbabwe. Through in-depth interviews with ten Zimbabwean
public managers, we find that the civil servant recruitment process in Zimbabwe is not entirely
based on merit. The three main challenges identified by the study were bureaucratic power,
political interference, and budget constraints due to economic crisis. These reasons are related to
the features of prismatic societies where traditional and modernized values and cultural patterns
coexist. Based on the results, we argue that developing countries in prismatic societies need to
intentionally initiate civil service reforms—including civil servant recruitment processes—to
transform the administration in a modernized way.
Key words: merit recruitment system, comparative public administration, prismatic society,
          bureaucracies, Zimbabwean public personnel management
INTRODUCTION
A civil service system is an integral part of all government systems to allow critical interface
between the government and its citizens. According to Ingraham (1995), the role of the civil
service is to recruit qualified personnel, reward and develop the public workforce, and provide
guidelines and rules to satisfy public demands. The roles of the civil service, its characteristics,
and the skills of its personnel have dramatically changed to meet new demands. The functions of
the civil service system in the recruitment process of civil servants should be merit-based,
dynamic, responsive, and adaptive to the ever changing administrative, political, economic, and
social environments (Zaman, 2015).
The civil service system in Zimbabwe, a developing country in Africa, is embedded with
bureaucratic structures that are closed and rely on hierarchical authority; as a result, these
structures are rigid, complex, and inflexible. Due to the inflexibility, the civil service system lacks
dynamism and efficacy in the recruitment process. For the Zimbabwean context, Zungura (2014)
stated that bureaucrats are motivated by self-interest and they maximize for themselves at the

                                                  84

International Journal of Public Administration and Management Research (IJPAMR), Vol. 6, No. 2, March,
2021. Available online at http://journals.rcmss.com/index.php/ijpamr; www.academix.ng
ISSN: 2350-2231(E) ISSN: 2346-7215 (P)
Overson, Musopero & Geon Lee , 2021, 6(2):84-99

expense of the public interest. There is a Public Service Act, a piece of legislation that guides a
merit-based recruitment process, but it does not function properly. The existing structures that
are considered to have merit are manipulated for the benefit of the elite. Bureaucratic structures
in the civil service system and the management of the Public Service Commission (the
government recruitment agency) in Zimbabwe are characterized by a chain of command and red
tape. To this effect, the civil service recruitment process involves an extensive amount of
paperwork and unnecessary delays which are detrimental to the levels of efficiency.

The most fundamental dilemma confronting the modern civil service system in Zimbabwe is
determining how to neutralize the civil service system. The civil service system and the civil
servants should be responsive to political direction (Smalskys and Urbanovic, 2017). In this
regard, there is no clear separation between politics and the civil service system in Zimbabwe,
and this has a detrimental effect on the merit-based recruitment process. The excessive use of
political appointments and patronage have greatly affected the civil servant recruitment process
in Zimbabwe. The merit principles are often compromised, resulting in a non-merit-based
recruitment process.

While personnel management has been under-researched in most developing countries—
especially in sub-Saharan African countries (World Bank, 2009)—many studies were concerned
with managerial practices of Western developed countries. This indicates that there is a gap in
comparative public administration literature. Acknowledging the argument by Zhou (2012) that
the lack of literature has left the government of Zimbabwe and the Public Service Commission
not fully informed about the challenges faced in the merit-based recruitment of civil servants, we
address personnel management issues of the Zimbabwean government in this research.

The results of this study will help the government to make civil servant recruitment reforms. It
is also hoped that through these results a collaborative approach can be utilized to implement a
merit-based, dynamic, responsive, and effective civil service system with quality and skilled
recruits. In this study, we mainly identify the challenges faced in implementing merit-based civil
servant recruitment in Zimbabwe. To deeply understand the challenges of the Zimbabwean civil
recruitment system, we employ Fred Riggs’ prismatic society framework with qualitative
methods to interview ten public managers.

BACKGROUND
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country in the southern region of Africa. Its neighboring countries are
Mozambique (east), Botswana (west), Zambia (north), and South Africa (south). Zimbabwe
proclaimed its independence from British rule in April 1980. Currently, Zimbabwe has a
population of approximately 16 million people and its geographical size is about 390,757 square
kilometers.

After gaining political independence in 1980, the new Zimbabwean administration inherited an
administrative bureaucracy. A study conducted by Agere (1998) indicated that in the inherited
administration the size, composition, operation, and orientation was heavily inclined toward the
British colonial masters. This structure affected Zimbabwe’s Civil Service and the recruitment
system, because it did not commensurate with the socio-economic and political imperatives of
the country. Although efforts were put forth, the recruitment system was in a state of crisis.
Currently, all recruitments of civil servants in Zimbabwe are done by the Public Service
Commission. This Commission works together with various Human Resource Teams across all
the government departments. The Public Service Commission is an arm of the government
created based on the terms in Section 202 of the Republic of Zimbabwe’s Constitution. This
commission is responsible for the administration of civil service in Zimbabwe (Kavran, 2009).

However, Chigudu (2014) discovered that there is weak accountability for human resource
management in the public sector in Zimbabwe. There is a high level of discretion afforded to
both politicians and senior civil servants without necessary checks and balances. Zhou (2012)
asserts that civil servant recruitment procedures are often not openly competitive. Although the
recruitment process and regulations are well outlined by the law, the selection stages are
monopolized by the Public Service Commission. Most of the senior positions are only open to
employees who are already in the system. The absence of the civil service examination affects a
meritocratic recruitment of civil servants. The system has many loopholes that allow the
recruitment of unqualified workers. It is a closed system that is rigid and inefficient. Reforms are
viewed as destructive rather than constructive.

Zimbabwe has suffered from economic crisis for a long time. Due to these economic hardships,
Zimbabwe is a country that has experienced a hyper inflationary environment for a prolonged
period; this has resulted in a high fiscal deficit. To cope with the budget deficit, the government
cuts expenditures by reducing the size of the civil service workforce (Makumbe, 2007).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Prismatic Society Framework
The term “prismatic society” was coined by Fred W. Riggs in his work, The Ecology of Public
Administration, in 1961 (Chapman, 1966). As the father of comparative public administration,
he proposed that there was a strong relationship and interaction between any form of
administration and its external surrounding. The prismatic society model is a theory that explains
how factors like political, social, economic, and administrative among other systems are
influenced by their environments and vice versa. From a prismatic society view, Zimbabwe is
regarded as one of the prismatic societies where features of both traditional and modernized
societies coexist.

The prismatic society is defined as a transitional society, which is located between a fused
(underdeveloped) society and diffracted (developed) society. This society has passed the fused
society stage, but it lacks some qualities to become a diffracted society. According to Zwart
(2010), a prismatic society is a heterogeneous society with features of both fused and diffracted
societies, containing the elements of the traditional, fused type of social organizations and
elements of structurally differentiated modern societies. The prismatic society is not a free society
neither is it a vacuum. Riggs clearly depicts the prismatic society and its features using a diagram
of a prism as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Riggs’s Prismatic Model

SOCIETY: Fused Prismatic Society Diffracted Society

Source: Riggs (1964)

According to Riggs (1964), there are three main characteristics of the prismatic society, which
are heterogeneity, formalization, and functional overlapping. A prismatic society is homogenous
in nature. It has the co-existence of the traditional and modern societies, and the simultaneous
presence of different kinds of systems, practices, and viewpoints. There is a blend of chambers
(fused society) and bureaus (diffracted society) in the prismatic society. Kasfir (1969) states that
the prismatic society is characterized by high formalism.

There is a wide gap between theory and practice in the prismatic society. The formally prescribed
regulations are not effectively practiced. In this case, the merit system may be the legal method
for recruiting bureaucrats, but the actual appointments may be based on non-merit considerations
such as nepotism, favoritism, or patronage. The prismatic society is also characterized by
overlapping, whereby differentiated structures (clubs) co-exist with undifferentiated structures
(sects). In the prismatic society, similar functions are performed by different institutions.
Overlapping has five dimensions: nepotism, poly-communalism, poly-normativism, lack of
consensus, and authority versus control. Recruitment is based on nepotism and favoritism as
social obligations to give government positions to relatives, family members, and friends in the
prismatic society. This denotes the overlapping behavior of both fused and diffracted societies.

As a transitional society, the prismatic society is characterized by political instability, increasing
insecurity, inequality, negative political and administrative developments, recruitments based on
attainment, high levels of corruption, double standards, and a marked difference between formal
and effective institutions and practices (Weidner, 1965). It is associated with many negative
factors that affect the full implementation of administrative responsibilities.

There is a strong relationship between a prismatic society and developing countries including
African countries. In fact, the majority of countries in sub-Saharan Africa are prismatic societies.
Their administrative structures can be best explained by the prismatic society theory. Zimbabwe
is one of the countries characterized by the existence of a gap between theory and practice. While
reforms are encouraged in the laws within the constitutions of many African countries, the
practices in the public institutions and public service delivery reflect the features of the traditional
society. There is formalization of the structures and as a result, the pace of success in the reforms
in different sectors suffers at the stage of implementation. Developing countries in Africa are in
a prismatic society stage and they suffer from institutional weaknesses which makes both
87

implementation and measuring results difficult (Riggs, 1964; Subban and Doorgapersad, 2014).
Obinna and Evans (2019) cite Tanzania as a heterogeneous society with co-existing structures
that lead to insufficient capacity both in terms of technical and resource capacity. Despite the
ambition to reach the stages attained by developed countries, some African countries such as
Tanzania and Nigeria have been dependent on developed countries in both technical knowhow
and resources to make reforms. The prismatic society outlines that as a result of limited
innovations and inventiveness, developing countries in Africa tend to pay minimum attention to
the public service reforms.

There is a high emergence of some administrative problems of the prismatic society in developing
countries in Africa. Although they strive to become modern societies, their administrations face
some challenges from the social, economic, and political environments. Tanzania, for instance,
experiences inequality and high levels of corruption while Nigeria is characterized by political
instability and increasing insecurity in its administration. In their transitional phase, these
countries are stuck with double standards of administration. This makes it hard to implement
transparency and efficiency through auditing and performance evaluations. All these challenges
resemble the prismatic society and they have stifled development reforms.

The cultural and legal environments of developing countries affect their methods of
administration. According to Okotoni (2001), the judiciary and its regulations are manipulated
for the benefit of the elite in Nigeria—the most populous country in Africa. There is no separation
of powers between the judiciary and those with high authority, resulting in uncontrollable and
unpunishable violations and manipulations of the civil service regulations. This is one of the main
characteristic of the prismatic society.

Riggs (2006) states that the prismatic society reflects all these administrative challenges and
helps to provide better strategies to implement effective reforms for a smooth transition to the
diffracted society. The prismatic society is very crucial in the civil service fraternity. It outlines
high heterogeneity, formalization, and functional overlapping as major challenges of change in
the civil service. This explains why change from a non-merit-based civil service to a merit-based
civil service system is embedded with a plethora of challenges. Riggs (1962) attests that in a
prismatic society civil service, reforms need to be understood from a modernization of what was
formerly called administrative reforms. Although many challenges are faced in transition to a
merit civil service system, the prismatic society helps to understand the needs of a complete
transition toward good administration. To understand the civil service system and its recruitment
process, there is a need to understand its functions and structures as well. The civil service
development in the prismatic society depends on the favorable conditions for change in the
system. Generally, the pressure for change in the prismatic society comes from both internal and
external sources of its civil service system. Utilizing the prismatic society theory for transition,
this study proposed a framework from non-merit- to merit-based recruitment processes in
Zimbabwe, as indicated in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Research Framework

Literature Review: Civil Service Systems in Prismatic Societies

Nepotism
Nepotism is widely used in the recruitment of civil servants in traditional societies and
developing countries. The term nepotism is defined differently from one place to another.
However, scholars and researchers agree that nepotism is a non-merit system. Gjinovci (2016)
defined nepotism as hiring based on family ties, friendships, and relationships with close relatives,
regardless of the merits and abilities and thus discriminates against others. Nepotism is the
recruitment manager’s preference or hiring of family members (nepots) rather than skilled and
qualified applicants (Bellow, 2003).

According to Obrador and Uhlmann (2018), nepotism is a practice of showing or giving favors
to one’s family members in economic or employment terms. This involves granting jobs to
friends and relatives without regarding merit. Nepotism is the use of power or influence for
attaining good jobs for or permitting unfair advantages to family members (Sherman, 2000).
Nepotism is also regarded as reciprocal whereby family members depend on each other to gain
favors in the job market. The interdependence within family structures views nepotism as a way
used by those with power and influence to grant jobs to their family counterparts with less power
and influence.

Sharir (1999) conducted a study to investigate how nepots are recruited and to identify the traits
of nepotism. In concurrence, Gildenhard (2018) stated that nepotism is characterized by
discrimination and inequality, non-merit appointments, and slow national development.
According to Cosper (1970), nepotism discriminates against non-family members and it has been
recognized as detrimental to society. It can also be detrimental to the hiring department itself.
Several studies showed that nepotism is characterized by discrimination in many civil service
systems in developing countries. White (2000) states that nepotism in West Africa discriminates
against eligible and qualified applicants from getting civil service jobs if they are not related to
the recruiting mangers.

Due to its discriminative nature, nepotism is associated with inequality in the recruitment system.
Nepotistic systems involve inequality whereby nepots have higher chances to be recruited than
their fellow qualified applicants. In nepotism systems, family ties, kinship, and friendship are
more valuable than qualifications and experiences for the job. This means that in this type of
89

recruitment system, qualified applicants without family ties to those with authority have lower
chances to be hired in the civil service system. Previous literature shows that there are drawbacks
of hiring nepots without qualifications. These nepots usually lack the ability, capacity, skills, and
knowledge required to perform their duties. This contributes to the emergence of other problems
like bribery, corruption, poor management, overspending, and lack of political will to make
necessary reforms, of which problems are pervasive in prismatic societies.

Favoritism
Favoritism refers to the act of offering jobs and contracts to the members of a certain social group
in preference to others who are outside the group (Prendergast and Topel, 1996). It is more similar
to nepotism, but broader. In the recruitment process, favoritism is defined as the recruitment,
appraisal, or promotion on the basis of connections and social ties rather than merit. Favoritism
is regarded as a mechanism for surplus diversion, different from recruitment opportunities from
the larger society, and targets small, political, social, or religious groups.

According to Bute (2011), favoritism is the separation of individuals and groups who are
considered favorites from their counterparts. It is based on a certain type of connection (social,
economic, political, or religious) between the favor granter and the favor recipient (favorites). In
this regard, favoritism is the recruitment process that considers the privilege of non-qualified
“favorites” to get jobs for which they do not qualify.

Rickman and Witt (2008) state that favoritism-based recruitment systems are characterized by
selection of job applicants based on ethnic, racial, social, economic, political, and religious
connections, being associated with norms and obligations to transact favors (granting jobs) to
one’s group members. Two main theories were developed from the previous literature to explore
the characteristics of favoritism in the public sector recruitment process.

The first theory originated in the work of Becker (1957). He states that favoritism is characterized
by individuals who have a preference for hiring and working with a certain type of people over
another. They are also willing to pay a price for this preference. The second theory of Arrow and
Phelps (1972) alludes that favoritism is characterized by individuals who have limited
information about the skills and abilities of others. They, therefore, go on to say that favoritism
is an equilibrium phenomenon which is sustained by negative beliefs regarding the relation
between observable characteristics (such as race, ethnicity, or gender) and unobservable
characteristics (such as skills). The combination of these theories gives adequate characteristics
that explain the reasons why individuals opt for favoritism-based recruitments.

Ackerman (1996) states that since favoritism creates a homogenous workforce with shared values,
it is easy to achieve collective goals. Common values, religious beliefs, and aligned political
ideologies in a favoritism-based system result in a coherent civil service system with high
consensus. This system manages conflicts in an amicable way based on shared values, beliefs,
and ideologies. The favoritism-based system is centered on the transactions and maintenance of
favors. Therefore, favoritism is good as it fosters relentless loyalty and interdependence which
are beneficiary toward the proper functioning of a civil service system. According to previous
studies, favoritism is prevalent in both developing and developed countries, but in the former it
is more common.

Merit system
When a country’s civil servants are hired based on a merit system, its civil service can contribute
to national development. According to McCourt (2007), a merit system is defined as a process of
hiring and promoting government employees based on their ability to perform the job. It is

designed to ensure fair, open recruitment, competition, and free employment opportunities
unburdened by political influence and any other non-merit factors. In the broadest sense, a merit
system in modern civil service means a personnel system in which ability or achievement govern
each individual’s selection. Sen (2000) divided merit into closed and open merit systems.

The merit-based recruitment system is a practice of identifying the correct human resource pool
and selecting the best candidates to occupy job vacancies (Reynolds and Xian, 2014). It is a
mechanism for fair recruitment without political interference or any other forms of influence.
The merit system is a recruitment method used to cope with the challenges of patronage,
nepotistic, and favoristic recruitment systems. It is guided by laws and regulations to be followed
in the recruitment process. Unlike other types of recruitment systems, a merit-based recruitment
system is a standardized and objective approach to hire the most competent, skilled, and qualified
job applicant. It is a blind recruitment process to avoid the influence of connections and social
ties among the recruitment managers to choose the right candidate.

Graper’s (2005) work indicates that a merit system promotes diversity. In the recruitment process,
the merit system values cultural, gender, and generational diversity. Similarly, Subramanian
(2019) investigated the relationship between diversity and merit, finding out that the merit system
creates equal chance for applicants from all cultural backgrounds to be hired in the civil system.
Frasher (2007) indicates that building a merit-based recruitment system is very complex for many
countries because of several constraints. Studies in the U.S., Britain, and Australia indicated that
in the beginning of 1880s, their civil service systems were plagued by problems of corruption
and inefficiency. White (2010) states that during George Washington’s administration, most of
the war collaborators were prized with important positions in the civil service.
In some cases, the merit system requires extra documents such as medical reports and high-paid
examinations, thereby discriminating against those who cannot afford to obtain the paperwork.
In the merit system, a civil service examination is used as the main criteria of the recruitment
process, but sometimes its validity is questioned. High scores in the examination may not always
equate to high performance. Candidates may have knowledge without skills and capability to
turn it into practice. In the Zimbabwean context where merit is a nominal standard, patronage is
still common where the perceived merit is manipulated for political gains, as it is in other
prismatic societies.

RESEARCH METHOD
In-depth interviews were used to examine the challenges of the civil recruitment process in
Zimbabwe. Non-probability sampling was utilized to select 10 public managers in Zimbabwe
whose qualities and experiences permit an understanding of the research topic to participate in
this study. In this respect, participants for this study were selected purposively to inform an
understanding of the civil servant recruitment process. These participants who are employed as
public managers in the civil service were selected from the Public Service Commission and other
government departments. The selection was mainly based on the researcher’s personal judgment,
not the affiliated government department.

Once selected, a letter of informed consent was initially discussed over the phone and once
consent was granted, the interview commenced through email. Silverman (2000) defined in-
depth interview as a qualitative research instrument. It utilizes a list of open-ended questions to
gather information on the area of study. The researcher used in-depth interviews to collect data
from public managers of various departments of the Zimbabwean civil service system. Ten
interview questionnaires were sent through emails to the 10 selected participants.

RESULTS
Challenge 1: Bureaucratic power
Multiple participants reported that excessive bureaucratic power in the civil service system has
detrimental effects on the implementation of merit-based recruitment. Both the civil service
system and the main recruitment agent, the Public Service Commission, are characterized by
bureaucratic structures.

“The recruitment system in our country is affected by bureaucratic structures that are
rigid, inflexible, and closed. The civil service system and the recruitment process is
designed in a way that exclude external influence.” (Participant 5)

“The current civil service system is characterized by red tape because of bureaucratic
nature lack of responsiveness. The lack of responsiveness in our recruitment system results
in failure to meet the quality, quantity of the recruits thereby compromising merit.”
(Participant 9)

“Bureaucratic structures within the civil service have turned it into a closed system.
Therefore, our civil service system cannot interact with or respond to the outside
environment. It is still using the old ways of operations that are now outdated. This is the
reason why merit-based recruitment system is not being implemented as new way of
operation.” (Participant 4)
The civil service system in Zimbabwe is embedded with many rules and regulations. To affect
any change there are some protocols to be followed.

“Personally I have tried many ways to promote merit in the hiring at our department
level but there was a lot of protocols to be followed. It took a long time for my requests
and proposals to be accepted and the end nothing was endorsed. Bureaucratic systems
cannot adapt some changes over night and constant persuasions for change to merit
can result in conflicts and tensions.” (Participant 10)

Other participants indicated that the fear of cultural change within the bureaucratic structures and
the fear of losing bureaucratic power result in delaying the implementation of a merit-based
recruitment process in Zimbabwe.

“One of the main challenges that we face in implementing merit system is the resistance
from our counterparts with bureaucratic power. Although most of them have some
capacity to implement merit-based recruitments they think that later on it may create
some threats to their power and authority.” (Participant 3)

The bureaucratic structures in the civil service system are highly centralized. There is a top-down
chain of command. As a result, one government recruitment agency (Public Service Commission)
is responsible for the recruitment of all civil servants. The study revealed that the bureaucratic
power in the civil service system gave all the recruitment responsibilities and authorities to the
Public Service Commission. The centralization of the civil service recruitment processes created
many challenges in skills assessment and talent identification, thereby affecting merit
considerations.
“The recruitment of all civil servants is no longer done at the department level but at
the national level. All recruitments are now processed in the capital city by one
government agency. The human resource teams at various departments identify
vacancies and send them to the Public Service Commission. The commission then
advertises and carries out interviews and sends the list of successful job applicants to
92

the responsible departments. In my opinion, this level of bureaucracy has affected the
quality of the recruitment process because it is complex, and it ruins merit.” (Participant
1)

The majority of the applicants indicated their concerns about a bureaucratic civil service system
that determines who is to be hired in their departments without considering the departmental
internal operations. It was revealed that most of the recruitment personnel in the Public Services
Commission have much knowledge on human resources and personnel management, but they
lack knowledge about each and every government department’s expectation of its recruitment
process. This causes irrational decision making in the recruitment process, which is the opposite
of merit-based recruitment.

“Most of the recruitments are done from a human resource perspective without
considering other skills needed in the department with a job vacancy. As a result,
applicants with managerial skills are recruited even in the vacancies that require technical
skills. This creates conflicts because sometimes departments have their own desired
technical candidates which are different from managerial related applicants that they
receive from the commission after the recruitment process. The hiring departments usually
end up feeling like the commission had imposed recruitments on them. In this situation, a
meritocratic system cannot be easily achieved.” (Participant 6)

Challenge 2: Political Interference
The evil of political interference in the civil service system is an obstacle for the full
implementation of the merit system in Zimbabwe. The study revealed that it is very difficult to
implement a merit system in the Zimbabwean civil service system, because there is no balance
between partisan politics and the institutions of the state. There is extensive political intervention
and political abuse in the civil service system. This denotes that instead of focusing on merit
issues, the civil service system follows the political direction.

“The promotion and recruitment of civil servants is based on loyalty and respect to those
with the political power rather than professional capability and experience. This act of
politicizing our civil service system has killed meritocracy.” (Participant 2)

“There is no clear separation of politics and the civil service system. Everything that is
operated by the government is politicized and owned by the ruling political party. The civil
service system is not free to make its decisions like implementing the merit system without
the political interferences.” (Participant 8)

“Due to high political interference in our civil service system a transition to merit system
is national dream that can take ages to become a reality.” (Participant 3)

During the interviews, one interviewee talked about the violation of laws and regulations that
were set in place to ensure merit-based recruitment. This means that merit laws and guidelines
are there, but their implementation is disrupted by the politicians and the political pressure groups
to fulfill their political and personal interests. Through political interferences, those with political
power and influence identify gaps to manipulate and violate the merit recruitment laws for their
benefit.

“The current civil service system already has merit laws and regulations in place, but they
are not fully implemented because in reality, here politics is above the law. Section 83 of
the constitution and the Public Service Act give proper guidelines of how civil servants

should be recruited to ensure merit, but they are not observed in many cases.” (Participant
7)

“Our country is very good at designing and making lucrative civil service laws and policies,
but the actual implementation is poor because of violations and manipulations. The main
reason why merit is hard to implement is that we don’t respect our own merit regulations
in the current civil service system. We make merit regulations then later on they are violated
and at the end we will remain with the same non merit ways of recruiting the civil servants.”
(Participant 4)

Political interference and its non-merit practices like patronage, nepotism, and favoritism creates
conflicts between political appointees, nepots, favorites, and qualified career civil servants.
Placing political appointees and career civil servants to work together in the same department
creates tensions and conflict regarding the implementation of the merit-based civil servants.

“It is hard to achieve merit when political appointees are working in the same
department with career civil servants because of differences. They tend to control each
other resulting in endless arguments and disagreements.” (Participant 10)
The public managers also complained that political interferences had created many ghost workers.
According to the participants, these workers are on the list of civil servants and they receive
salaries every month, but they do not physically exist.

“Due to political intervention, almost every department of the civil service has some ghost
workers who are on the payroll. The major question is who receive their salaries without
doing any work. These ghost workers are well known but they are never removed from
the system because they have deep political roots. Their existence is a great disturbance
for transparency issues and for building a strong merit-based civil service system.”
(Participant 9)
Challenge 3: Budget Constraints due to Economic Crisis
The study showed that economic crises such as poor economic production and high inflation
were contributing to non-merit recruitment practices in the civil service system of Zimbabwe.
Economic crisis is regarded as a barrier toward the implementation of the merit-based recruitment
of civil servants, because the civil service system lacks financial capacity. The economic
environment is not conducive for the full implementation of the merit-based recruitment.

“The economic crisis that is currently faced by the whole country have affected all
government institutions including the civil service system. All the operations including
the recruitment process is guided by the civil service budget. This means that the amount
of financial inputs determines the processes and outputs in the civil service system.
Since there is lack of financial capacity due to the economic crisis, the civil service
system is struggling to implement the merit system.” (Participant 8)
Multiple participants also mentioned how an economic crisis contributes to corruption in the
Zimbabwean civil service system. They highlighted the poor salaries that the recruitment
managers and other public managers receive. The personnel who conduct the civil service
recruitment process are not paid well and they are tempted to engage in corrupt, non-merit
activities to get extra money to increase their incomes. This is causing corruption whereby
applicants are buying job favors from the recruitment managers.

“Our salaries are not good enough for our living expenses. We are usually underpaid as
compared to our counterparts with same job positions in other developing countries. I think
this is the reason why corruption is rampant in the civil service system. We are not satisfied
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by our salaries and this badly affects our performance. It is very difficult to do the work
correctly when you are not satisfied that’s why some public managers resort to non-merit
ways of recruitment because it’s easy and not complex.” (Participant 1)

“You cannot expect someone to be honest and to be committed when the payment is below
the standard. Our level of honesty and commitment as public mangers to implement the
merit system is reduced.” (Participant 7)
Bribery was also revealed as an unethical transaction used to access jobs in the civil service
system. To cope with poor salaries, some public managers receive bribes from the applicants in
exchange for jobs.

“Bribery is now a common practice in the recruitment process. Although not every public
manger take bribery. There are many cases where applicants buy jobs. This had created
inequalities and discrimination of the applicants who cannot pay bribes. This act of bribery
destroyed the ethical considerations that are vital in the implementation of the merit-based
recruitment.” (Participant 9)

“The unethical practice of bribery brought confusion and disorder in the operations and
recruitment process of our civil service system. The desire to implement the merit system
is overpowered by the financial gains of bribery.” (Participant 5)
Due to economic crisis, the government usually faces a budget deficit. Participants indicated that
the government cut the expenditure by reducing the size of the civil service system. Whenever
the budget is not sufficient, the government retrenches some civil servants to reduce its costs.

“One problem with our government is that they usually cut the size of the civil service
workforce whenever the national budget us not balancing. Several departments are forced
to carry out massive retrenchment. This means that there is always loss of some quality
employees who are hard to replace when there is a budget surplus. Sudden retrenchments
create more problems in implementing a merit system.” (Participant 6)

“Budget constraints limits the application of merit in the recruitment process because the
civil service system strives to operate within the limits of the available budget and
sometimes it is down sized.” (Participant 1)
In Figure 3, we suggest the reasons why Zimbabwe has not implemented merit-based practices
in the civil servant recruitment process. Riggs (1964) named bureaucracy in prismatic societies
as sala, which is a Spanish word, indicating that the bureaucracy has a mixture of both
bureaucratic features in traditional societies and those in modernized societies. The prismatic
society theory indicates that sala bureaucracy involves corruption such as bribery, cheating, and
nepotism in the process of recruitment (Harber, 1993).
In addition, there is a discrepancy between formal and effective behavior in sala bureaucracy,
meaning that a clear gap exists between “what should be done” and “what is done” (Chapman,
1966). Our findings show that there are rules and laws regarding merit in the Zimbabwean
government, but they have not been properly implemented in the real field. There is a clear divide
between politics and administration in developed countries, thus politics does not interfere with
bureaucrats. But politics and administration are not completely separate in sala bureaucracy, and
interference in administration by politics are pervasive in prismatic society, which is also
observed in our study.
Another finding that should be addressed in our study is that the Zimbabwean government faces
budget constraints that hinder the implementation of the merit system. Although Fred Riggs did
not specify the budget constraint as a peculiarity of bureaucracy in a prismatic society, it can be
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easily inferred that many developing countries confront financial difficulties resulting from the
gap between “reality” of the present and “ideal state” of the future. At times, such financial
difficulties may come from corruption related to bribery that reduce tax collection or from
embezzlement of an international support fund by persons holding political power.
In Zimbabwe, the merit system exists but it does not function properly and civil servant
recruitment is made in such a non-standardized way as nepotism, as is the case in prismatic
societies. Some scholars call prismatic societies as “transitional” ones to refer to the mid-point
between traditional “fused” and modernized “diffracted” societies. But Riggs hesitated to use
that term, instead he utilized prismatic societies because those societies were not automatically
transferred to modernized diffracted societies over time. Some prismatic societies may move to
diffracted ones, and other prismatic societies can sustain permanently (Riggs, 1964). As
traditional and modern values and behavior coexist in prismatic societies, they are more likely to
transfer to diffracted societies when people follow modernized behavior and accept modernized
values as much as they possibly can.
Although it may be very difficult for all traits of prismatic societies to change to that of diffracted
societies in Zimbabwe, nepotism-based civil recruitment systems can be transformed to the merit
ones through appropriate efforts. Similar civil service reforms are needed to those that many
developed countries have already experienced, such as the United Kingdom (the Northcote-
Trevelyan Report in 1854) and the United States (e.g., the Pendleton Act in 1883). The primary
step for reforming the civil servant recruitment system is to adopt open and competitive civil
service examinations to secure fairness from hiring corruption due to nepotism. In addition, it is
necessary to establish institutional arrangement to manage and control for effective
implementation of the merit system while benchmarking managerial practices of developed
countries.
Figure 3. Factors that Affect the Zimbabwean Civil Service System

CONCLUSION
The main objective of this study was to identify the challenges faced in implementing merit-based
civil servant recruitment in Zimbabwe. The key findings of the study indicate that the civil servant
recruitment process in Zimbabwe is not entirely based on merit. This study found that the main
challenges identified by the study were bureaucratic power, political interference, and budget
constrains due to economic crisis faced by the Zimbabwean government. These characteristics
were shared with those of prismatic societies suggested by Riggs (1964). Riggs claims that many
developing countries belong to the prismatic society where traditional and modernized modes and
values coexist. Specifically, rules of merit have been stipulated in the Zimbabwean government,

International Journal of Public Administration and Management Research (IJPAMR), Vol. 6, No. 2, March,
2021. Available online at http://journals.rcmss.com/index.php/ijpamr; www.academix.ng
ISSN: 2350-2231(E) ISSN: 2346-7215 (P)
                                                    Overson, Musopero & Geon Lee , 2021, 6(2):84-99

but nepotism-based recruitment is prevalent for the aforementioned reasons, leading to a litany of
corruption inside government.

Our findings suggest that many developing governments in prismatic societies, as well as the
Zimbabwean government, are finding new ways to reform governments. Civil service reforms
should be initiated in a way that personal management, including the recruitment system, be
merit-based. Prismatic features in government are not automatically changed or advanced, but
intentionally transformed through active civil service reforms. To secure fairness in civil servant
recruitment, open competitive civil service examination needs to be implemented. South Korea
is a good example for benchmarking it where open competitive civil service examination has
systematically been implemented for a long time. In addition to recruitment systems, using
managerial practices based on merit is important inside government. Developing countries should
try to benchmark or adopt merit-based personnel management practices from developed
countries—what is referred to as diffracted societies in Riggs’ terminology—in order to
modernize administration to increase efficiency.

Although this study contributes to the competitive public management literature, we
acknowledge it has some limitations. The study is qualitative in nature; hence, it is not based on
empirical evidence. Qualitative data based on personal knowledge and experience was used for
this study. Therefore, it was hard to quantify some useful data that could have added much value
to the study. The use of qualitative tools only was not adequate for the extraction of more
scientific data that could have been analyzed and verified using quantitative methods. Future
research is recommended to empirically test our findings to confirm their validity. The study has
a representation problem of interviewing only ten public managers. All the results were
generalized based on this small sample. Ten public managers are not enough to represent the
whole civil service system. These managers were all based in urban areas and it is difficult to
generalize the results to rural settings. In the future, a large sample which includes both the urban
and rural participants will give good results.

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AUTHORS BIO:
Overson Musopero (first author) is a doctoral student at Korea University majoring in public
administration. His specialization is public personnel management and comparative public
administration between African and developed countries. He received a MPA degree from
Hanyang University.
Geon Lee (corresponding author) is an associate professor in the School of Policy Science at
Hanyang University, Seoul Korea. He specialized in public personnel management, public
organization, and public innovation. His publication can be found in Public Administration
Review, American Review of Public Administration, Public Management Review, and Review
of Public Personnel Administration.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We are grateful to public managers in government agencies in Zimbabwe for participating in in-
depth interviews for this study. This research paper is a revised version of the master's thesis of
Overson who has received a Master's degree from Hanyang University under the direction of
Professor Lee.

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